"Being creative and using your creativity even if it's not sought after or collected is important for your quality of life," said Craig, a financial adviser on Morgan Stanley Smith Barney's Private Wealth Management team. "The people I've found most successful in business are very good at what they do, and they're also creative."

Craig helped research and produce Texas Artists Today, a coffee table gem that will be released this November.

The book had been a dream of arts journalist Catherine Anspon for more than five years.

It took flight by coincidence, quite literally.

Craig and his wife, Tatiana, were on a plane heading to Art Basel, an international art festival in Miami, when they got to chatting with Anspon, who was on her way to cover the festival for PaperCity magazine.

"We started talking about our passion for art," Craig said. "She said she had been trying to put together a book on contemporary artists in Texas the last five years."

Craig and Tatiana agreed to meet up with Anspon later at the festival.

"Which is sort of like saying let's try to meet up at the Super Bowl," said Anspon, a Heights resident.

But they did, and one month later, things got under way, although it took another three years before the book was ready for print.

There are more than 14,000 artists in Texas, Craig said, so to choose only 100 was difficult.

In the end, they had room for 62 - although the remaining 38 are listed in the back of the book, and there may potentially be a second volume in the future.

Each artist has four pages dedicated to him or her.

In the studio

Photographers captured images of the artists in their studios. From there, Tatiana created a unique collage for each individual artist. Each artist has an additional two pages of images of his or her artwork, and one page of a written summary, courtesy of Anspon.

"It was a labor of love," Anspon said. "It's writing beautiful, clean copy that is lively. It was a dream come true, and the book became an art object, too."

McKay Otto, who now lives in Wimberley but owned a studio in the Heights for several years, is one of the featured artists.

"It's been years since a really serious book has been done on Texas artists," Otto said. "I think it's very timely. We need positive energy to be sent to people. This book is very refreshing, and hats off to the amazing visionaries who have made this book possible."

Limited editions

Craig said 3,000 limited editions of the book are available, but several hundred have been pre-ordered by local bookstores, including River Oaks Bookstore, 3270 Westheimer, and Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet.